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Want to Start an Urban Farm? Raise Chickens and Bees? There's a Website for That

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Hayes Valley Farm, San Francisco | Photo by <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cjmartin/">Chris Martin</a>/Flickr/<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">Creative Commons
Hayes Valley Farm, San Francisco | Photo by Chris Martin/Flickr/Creative Commons

Have you been thinking about starting an urban farm on your property, or a community garden in your neighborhood? Are you wondering how many chickens your city will allow you to keep, if at all?

While we've shared a few resources with you here (on poultry ordinances in Los Angeles) and here (on agriculture regulations for every city in the county), there is one single site where you can locate everything from current laws and zoning information to the ins and outs of starting your own farm. That's the University of California's Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Urban Agriculture (or Urban Ag) site.

While Urban Ag doesn't explicitly compile all of that information directly on its site, it links to reliable sources online (such as the USDA, other university extension services, or agritourism boards) where you can go if, say, you were wondering how to budget for a school garden or what the current state of the drought is. Anything and everything related to urban farming, business management, production, food safety and handling, community and school gardens, and zoning and regulations within California are covered on the site.

This saves you endless hours of Googling random keywords and searching online forums for your answers, as you can browse by category using the site map or, better yet, enter your search terms on the site for a curated list of results that are related to your question and region.

Here are a few things you might find useful on Urban Ag:

Bookmark the Urban Agriculture site for more gardening and homesteading resources.

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